I was so happy that it would have made me turn handsprings (if I had ever been able to do so). Pulled up to the horse lot last night, looked over to the sacrifice area where the round bales are to see that Dan had brought his tractor over and pushed the manure and wasted hay fragments into a long line of composting material. The line of compost is perhaps 70 yards long and creates a berm on the lower side of the dry lot/sacrifice area. The berm will radically reduce runoff and will quickly break down into near powdery compost.
By pushing manure into such a line and keeping the height no more than knee high an enormous portion of the composting material is oxygenated. I hope to add substantial numbers of earth worms to the composting material to create an even more potent fertilizer.
However, one will only receive limited benefits regarding nitrogen supplementation using horse manure from horses that eat grass hay. Such a diet produces much less nitrogen that would be found in chicken manure, or even pig manure. Although nitrogen supplementation is limited, the organic material will build soil in every other way that compost benefits the earth.
We employ filter strips of living vegetation along the lowest side of the pastures. They are most effective in the summer.
It is a beautiful, living system that protects the water and replenishes the soil. When city people look at it all they see are weeds and stacks of what they call "poop." This is another way that our horse lots serve as classrooms.
The horse lot is an institution of learning. I want to keep it that way and build on it.
Those who do not know any better can look at its drab winter colors and muddy, shaggy ponies and only see something that they think needs to be polished. Those interested in reality instead of appearances see a place of healing and learning.
After all, there are hundreds of manicured parcels of acreage with perfectly uniform, monocultures of well trimmed grass found in every locality.
These beautiful places are known as cemeteries, but not a lot of teaching goes on in them.
2 comments:
Mud and mosquitos...Those who cannot appreciate the finer things in life need not apply, see? That is where the mud and mosquitos pay off, one cannot have flowers without bugs and mud.
That lower nitrogen content is really not all that big a deal, it still does the job, but without the damaging effects of excess nitrogen and phosphurus running off and causing problems elsewhere. Just look at that fresh gorgeous rye grass around the round pen.
The big advantage to windrow composting is that it requires very little infrastructure or attention, and the horses will churn it up, so, no maintenance, pile it, wait, move it to the garden, or pasture. I imagine come spring the little garden up next to the smokehouse will receive a healthy dose.
Now, for some obnoxiously potent compost, although it requires more work and attention, we could conceivably put a couple feet of the raw material into the pig pen, put down six or eight inches, and scatte a bag of corn, and repeat until it is deep enough, then turn the hogs in, a week or so later, the compost is done, the corn is gone, and the hogs are fatter. That particular method, applied to natural grass pastures will blow forage up pretty fast. This method works better with cattle, as the goal with cattle is rapid gains of weight, or milk production. It is not as appropriate as a regular application for horses, particularly our feed efficient horses as they require less rich feed. Sooner or later, I will happen across a good deal manure spreader, and per Lido's dream, we can have a real set of wheels at Mill Swamp, and incidentally take advantage of all that great compost. -Lloyd
"those who do not know better" look at the piles and rows of leaves around my farm and think "someone sure is lazy." Actually, it takes alot of work to put those leaves just so. Almost the same amount of work that it takes to rake them into giant piles and burn them, which is what most farmers around here do.
Burning those leaves is a terrible waste. These are not just any leaves -- they are walnut tree leaves. Walnut leaves contain toxins such that nothing but walnut trees like them. Anyplace you pile such leaves and allow them to decay, you create a no-growth zone. If you leave the leaves indefinitely, they decay into a rather lovely, fine brown carpet which will be weed-free for many years. If you leave them for a year or so, then rake up all the dead leaves and move them elsewhere... that ground will STILL remain weed-free for years to come.
I am constantly amazed by how many of my walnut-farming neighbors are unaware of this. I see them wasting hours mowing or wacking weeds along fencelines, and I ask them, "why not just pile walnut leaves there?" To overcome their scepticism, I invite them to view the fence line around my orchard, which remains neat and tidy year-round, with a modest, slightly raised brown mound (decayed leaves) running along the ground on both sides of the wire mesh.
It astonishes my walnut-farming neighbors to learn that walnut leaves can be used to suppress weeds. On their property, walnut leaves are not allowed to decay. They have been faithfully burning those leaves every fall their entire lives, just like their daddy did it, and just like their granddaddy did it.
Just goes to show. Sometimes you gotta think outside the box.
Deb in CA
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